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How to Build a Strength Program for Your Sport

A strength program for a sport serves the sport. The season decides how much lifting fits, speed and jumps come before the heavy work, and every week carries the injury-prevention exercises that sport needs most. This guide covers football, soccer, basketball, volleyball and wrestling, with the studies behind each dose.

Start from the season

The same athlete needs four different programs across a year:

Off-season. The window when lifting can be the priority. Build strength first, then turn it into power, in blocks of three or four weeks that each end in a lighter week.
Pre-season. Practice ramps up, so the lifting holds strength, sharpens speed and power, and tapers into the first game or camp.
In-season. One or two short sessions a week, placed around games. The goal is to keep what the off-season built.
Post-season. Two to four weeks of moderate loads, full range of motion and nothing near failure, before the next off-season starts.

Season lengths differ. A football season fits a 12-week in-season block that you can repeat, a folkstyle wrestling season runs about 16 weeks, and a basketball season 12 to 16. These are the lengths we planned each program around.

Speed and jumps first, while you are fresh

Sprints, jumps and throws go at the start of the session, before the squat or the deadlift, because they need full speed and fatigue takes it away. Conditioning that is meant to tire you out goes at the end.

Count them in their own units. A jump is dosed in ground contacts, so a session of 3 sets of 5 box jumps is 15 contacts. A sprint is dosed by distance: a 20 m acceleration, a 40 m flying sprint. Repeated-sprint work fits inside the ranges a 2026 review found: 2 to 6 sets of 4 to 10 sprints of 10 to 40 m, 20 to 30 seconds between sprints and 1 to 5 minutes between sets (Chen et al. 2026).

Practice supplies jumps too. Volleyball setters make about 121 jumps in a practice session (Skazalski, Whiteley & Bahr 2018), so the jump rows in the weight room stay small once practice starts, and in basketball, two short in-season jump sessions a week did as well as four at the same total volume (Figueira et al. 2025).

The injury-prevention work each sport needs

Each sport has a short list of exercises with trial evidence behind them. They go in every week, at a steady dose, and they are the last thing to cut from a short session.

Sport	Every week outside the post-season
Football	Nordic hamstring curls and neck strength, and Copenhagen adductions in every program except Football High School Foundation
Soccer	Nordic hamstring curls, Copenhagen adductions in the off-season, pre-season and in-season programs, and single-leg balance in the pre-season and in-season programs
Basketball	Jump and landing drills and single-leg balance, and calf work in every program except Basketball Training Light
Volleyball	Landing drills, rotator cuff and shoulder blade work, single-leg balance
Wrestling	Neck strength

Nordic hamstring curl. Programs that include it about halve hamstring injuries (van Dyk et al. 2019). Build it up: one session of 2 x 5 in week 1, two of 2 x 6 in week 2, then three sessions a week climbing to three sets of 12, 10 and 8 (Petersen et al. 2011). In season, one session a week of those three sets is the maintenance dose.

Copenhagen adduction. One set per side, in reps: 3 to 5 at first, then 7 to 10, then 12 to 15, and one set of 12 to 15 once a week in season (Harøy et al. 2019).

Single-leg balance. A balance program cut ankle sprains about in half in high school basketball and soccer players (McGuine & Keene 2006). The FIFA 11+ dose is two 30-second holds on each leg (Soligard et al. 2008 (FIFA 11+)).

Landing. Landing stabilisation, such as a single-leg hop and stick, belongs in every program that jumps (Petushek et al. 2019). In one study of high school volleyball, soccer and basketball players, girls without jump and landing training had 3.6 times the serious knee injuries of girls with it (Hewett et al. 1999).

Rotator cuff and shoulder blade work. For volleyball hitters, external rotation and shoulder blade exercises, taken from a handball trial as the closest overhead-sport evidence (Andersson et al. 2017). The off-season and pre-season programs do them three times a week, and the in-season program in both of its sessions.

Neck strength. Three 10-second isometric holds in each of four directions (front, back and each side), twice a week (Daly, Pearce & Ryan 2021). The same review found that this builds neck strength and found no evidence that it reduces impact injuries, so treat it as strength work and nothing more.

Choose plain main lifts

The main lifts are the ones a coach can teach in a session and load safely: a front or high bar squat, a trap bar deadlift, a Romanian deadlift, a bench or overhead press, pull-ups and rows, and single-leg work such as split squats.

Olympic lifts are optional. When a program uses them, it uses the hang power clean or the power clean (Weldon et al. 2022), in sets of 2 or 3 (Simenz, Dugan & Ebben 2005), because the point is speed and a tired clean is a slow one. A beginner or a youth athlete gets no Olympic lift: box jumps, broad jumps and medicine-ball throws train the same intent with nothing to catch. Supervised resistance training is safe and effective for adolescents (Faigenbaum et al. 2009 (NSCA)), so a young athlete should lift, starting from the basics.

Dose the in-season around games

One strength session a week kept soccer players' pre-season strength, sprint and jump through the first 12 weeks of a season, while one session every second week lost strength and sprint (Rønnestad et al. 2011). Most elite soccer coaches run 1 or 2 in-season sessions a week, most of 16 to 30 minutes (Loturco et al. 2022).

Place them by the game:

Football: the main session about two days after the game, a second no closer than two days before the next. In a short week, one session.
Soccer: the main session at least 72 hours from a match on either side. In a two-match week, a short session of sprints and Copenhagen adductions only.
Basketball: lift only on a day that is neither a game day nor the day before one. A week with no such day is a week off.
Wrestling: two short sessions placed around practice, tournaments and weigh-ins. Strength can dip across a season while power holds (Schmidt et al. 2005), which is the reason to keep lifting.

Keep each in-season session to a few lifts, take nothing near failure, and keep the injury-prevention work. If a session costs you anything at practice the next day, it was too much.

Restore after the season

The post-season block is low frequency and simple tools: a minimum dose that slows the loss of speed, power and fitness and evens out strength imbalances (Silva et al. 2016). Moderate loads, single-leg work, mobility and easy runs, with no sprints, and jumps only in small amounts late in the block if at all. Pain just below the kneecap that has lasted through the season is a reason to see a physiotherapist or sports doctor before the off-season starts.

Youth teams: the warm-up is the program

For youth soccer from about 13, the FIFA 11+ is about 20 minutes before practice: 8 minutes of running drills, 10 minutes of strength, jumps and balance, and 2 minutes of faster running (Soligard et al. 2008 (FIFA 11+)). It cut injuries by about 30 percent, with 10 to 12 weeks needed to show it (Sadigursky et al. 2017), so run it at least twice a week for 12 weeks. Compliance is the dose: the most compliant third had 88 percent fewer ACL injuries (Hägglund et al. 2013). Players under 13 have their own version, the 11+ Kids (Beaudouin et al. 2019 (11+ Kids)).

Doing it in Ægir Iron

Ægir Iron has free programs for each sport and season, built on the doses above. Each program page lists the studies it draws on:

To build your own, open the Program Wizard, pick your sport and choose the season phase. The wizard opens each day with the sport's sprints or jumps where it has them, protects its injury-prevention exercises at a steady dose, holds Olympic lifts to 2 or 3 reps with none for beginners, keeps an in-season session to four lifts, and makes the post-season a short restorative block with no sprints or jumps. Each protected exercise steps down to a version your equipment allows.

Build a sport program free →